No picture in media player when playing movies through NVidia TV-Out

[BernardP]

I posted this first in the Video and Graphics Forum, but got no reply. So I am trying here, hoping people might have encountered this.

I have enabled TV-Out to a 27-inch standard TV set, using Clone Mode, as explained in this

Nvidia Tutorial

I can see the desktop on the TV. I can see pictures. But when I start Windows Media Player or another media player (VLC, GOM), the picture is black, although the border of the player is displaying and I see the time running at the bottom.

My primary monitor is connected through DVI. TV is connected with S-Video. I am using NVidia 6150 integrated graphics, and this combination is supposed to work.

What am I missing here? The whole point of using TV-out is to watch movies on the TV set.

 

[SpeedEng66]

I had the same problem a long time ago

all I can remember is go to display settings goto advanced and there was a tab you go to bring up nvida controls and then a force clone box needed to be checked off to make everything on one screen only

sorry, the good old brain is not what it used to be

 

[Indolent]

you usually have to make the tv the primary display for video to show up.

 

[sdifox]

don't do clone , dual display is the way to do it, set second display to tv 480i. next go to overlay tab and set output to secondary or something similar to that. that should fix it, then your desktop can be whatever your monitor supports and the tv out is just tv out.

 

[BernardP]

I tried to try both suggestions from Indolent and sdifox and the whole thing is an incomprehensible mess.

The TV is in another room, which complicates the experiment.

I had to get my wife to remotely call mouse pointer movements on the TV screen, in the NVidia Control Panel, as I had managed to lose the ability to display anything but a bare desktop on my main monitor.

I thought I could keep everything as it is on my first monitor, then select 480i TV on a secondary monitor to display a movie. Obviously, it is not as simple as that. I give up for now.

I am still using the Classic CP and will have to move to the new CP when I get a discrete videocard in a couple of months. Maybe I will try my luck again at that time, if the new CP is more intuitive.

 

[BernardP]

Well, after some champagne and a good night's sleep, I decided to have another go at it... and I found the missing ingredient:

--- Select Clone Mode
--- Make the TV the main monitor. By default, it detects the correct resolution (NTSC-M in my case)
--- Missing ingredient: Set the computer monitor to 640x480: Quite a sight on a 24-inch widescreen

Setting the computer monitor to 640x480 takes care of out-of-range items and centering issues on the TV.

On the computer monitor, I can then select and launch the movie file I want to view. WMP opens and there is no visible picture, but the pictures does show correctly on the TV.

I have tried to do the same using Dual-View, but the computer monitor then switches to a bare desktop as soon as I make the TV the main monitor. Searching on the web about the difference between Dual View and Clone, what I find is that Dual View extends your screen area over the other monitor, while Clone duplicates the current screen. So my understanding is that Dual View is not suited to what I want to do in this situation.

Dual View would be the right choice for extending the desktop on two side-by-side monitors...Right?

I still don't understand why we can't have video showing in both monitors at once. I have searched the web and found lots of people posting about the same problem, either with ATI or NVidia. The solution is to make the TV the main monitor, but I have found no explanation for this.

 

[sdifox]

Originally posted by: BernardP
I tried to try both suggestions from Indolent and sdifox and the whole thing is an incomprehensible mess.

The TV is in another room, which complicates the experiment.

I had to get my wife to remotely call mouse pointer movements on the TV screen, in the NVidia Control Panel, as I had managed to lose the ability to display anything but a bare desktop on my main monitor.

I thought I could keep everything as it is on my first monitor, then select 480i TV on a secondary monitor to display a movie. Obviously, it is not as simple as that. I give up for now.

I am still using the Classic CP and will have to move to the new CP when I get a discrete videocard in a couple of months. Maybe I will try my luck again at that time, if the new CP is more intuitive.

Originally posted by: BernardP
Well, after some champagne and a good night's sleep, I decided to have another go at it... and I found the missing ingredient:

--- Select Clone Mode
--- Make the TV the main monitor. By default, it detects the correct resolution (NTSC-M in my case)
--- Missing ingredient: Set the computer monitor to 640x480: Quite a sight on a 24-inch widescreen

Setting the computer monitor to 640x480 takes care of out-of-range items and centering issues on the TV.

On the computer monitor, I can then select and launch the movie file I want to view. WMP opens and there is no visible picture, but the pictures does show correctly on the TV.

I have tried to do the same using Dual-View, but the computer monitor then switches to a bare desktop as soon as I make the TV the main monitor. Searching on the web about the difference between Dual View and Clone, what I find is that Dual View extends your screen area over the other monitor, while Clone duplicates the current screen. So my understanding is that Dual View is not suited to what I want to do in this situation.

Dual View would be the right choice for extending the desktop on two side-by-side monitors...Right?

I still don't understand why we can't have video showing in both monitors at once. I have searched the web and found lots of people posting about the same problem, either with ATI or NVidia. The solution is to make the TV the main monitor, but I have found no explanation for this.


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True Inconvenient Truth

You should turn off auto arrange on the dekstop

You can have video showing on both in dual view. Dual view works great, once you get it to work. My home machine is setup as dual view, you have to set full screen video to output to secondary. So if you want full screen video on both, just maximize the video window on your monitor. I'll try to post my setup when I get home.

You should really be on dual view, which solves the different resolution issue.

 

[BigJ]

I agree with sdifox. Dual view worked great (Panasonic plasma + desktop).

 

[BernardP]

Originally posted by: sdifox

You can have video showing on both in dual view. Dual view works great, once you get it to work. My home machine is setup as dual view, you have to set full screen video to output to secondary. So if you want full screen video on both, just maximize the video window on your monitor. I'll try to post my setup when I get home.

You should really be on dual view, which solves the different resolution issue.

Mmm... I am looking forward to understanding your setup. I have no idea what you mean by setting full screen video to secondary.